THERE is a woman on Michigan Boulevard keeps a parrot and goldfish and two white mice.
She used to keep a houseful of girls in kimonos and three pushbuttons on the front door.
Now she is alone with a parrot and goldfish and two white mice but these are some of her thoughts:
The love of a soldier on furlough or a sailor on shore leave burns with a bonfire red and saffron.
The love of an emigrant workman whose wife is a thousand miles away burns with a blue smoke.
The love of a young man whose sweetheart married an older man for money burns with a sputtering uncertain flame.
And there is a love one in a thousand burns clean and is gone leaving a white ash.
And this is a thought she never explains to the parrot and goldfish and two white mice.

Poet:Carl SandburgPoem:15.
White Ash
Volume:Smoke and Steel
- VIII. Circles of DoorsYear: Published/Written in 1922
Poem of the Day:Feb 10 2007
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